This blog contains information and reviews of Windows applications and games running on Linux and Mac using Wine and CodeWeavers CrossOver. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Micro-Sized Yet Feature Filled

Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange.

Resource-Friendly

µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 220 KB in size.

Skinnable and Localized

Various icon, toolbar graphic and status icon replacements are available, and creating your own is very simple. µTorrent also has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn't available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them!

Actively Developed and Improved

The developer puts in a lot of time working on features and making things more user-friendly. Releases only come out when they're ready, with no schedule pressures, so the few bugs that appear are quickly addressed and fixed.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Virtualisation software such as Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion let Mac users run the Windows operating system and Windows-only programs on a Mac, but the install process is complex and time-consuming, and the programs can slow down even a speedy Mac. As an alternative, Codeweavers CrossOver Mac Professional 7.0.2 uses just the Windows application programming interface (API) to run Windows apps on your Mac, without the Windows OS.

CrossOver is a kind of ‘translator of a translator’ and relies on an open-source program called Wine. When you install and run Windows apps, Wine is actually translating the API calls that allow a Windows program to run, such as “pull up this dialog box” or “save this file”. CrossOver hides the clunky interface of the open-source Wine software behind a more Mac-like interface.

CrossOver is an ingenious idea for a program that can save time and costs less than buying a separate copy of Windows.

Performance issues

Still, before you dream of storming the beach in Call of Duty 4 or running the latest Windows version of Adobe Photoshop (maybe your company has a Windows-only site license), be aware that CrossOver really only supports a handful of commercial applications, many of them from Microsoft; otherwise, it’s hit or miss.

CrossOver supports several games, including Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Counter-Strike. Both ran like they were on their native platform. Unfortunately, a vast majority of the latest PC games, such as Crysis and Call of Duty 4, are not fully supported yet. For productivity tools, CrossOver fully supports Microsoft Office 2000, and also supports more recent software – including Office 2003, Quicken, and Lotus Notes – but withknown bugs.

The Pro version of CrossOver (£44.99) we used for testing includes two distinct versions of the program, one for productivity and one for games. The Standard version (£25.99) doesn’t support games. This is a little confusing – we would prefer one program that ran both applications and games in a Pro version instead of having two icons in the Dock.

For supported applications, installation works well. For example, if you insert the installation disc for Adobe Photoshop CS2, CrossOver launches automatically and prompts you to install it. The installation takes place using the Windows API. CrossOver also adds newly installed programs to the Mac Applications folder, and you can launch them from the Dock. When you print, CrossOver uses your Mac print driver. In daily use for fully supported apps, CrossOver worked like a charm: it rarely got in the way of running Windows software.

Supporting role

For unsupported apps, Codeweavers hosts a forum where users can report their experiences in testing software and award colour-coded badges to indicate the program’s level of support. For example, you can find out if Quicken 2008 runs well, has some minor or major issues, or won’t run at all. CodeWeavers oversees the forums, but doesn’t provide a standard testing methodology or distinguish test results by hardware specifications. It also provides some Wine testing scripts.

We would like to see CrossOver maintain a database of supported commercial software and when you attempt an install, it presents an alert box with information about whether the program will work. This would save you a trip to the website. For example, we tried to install Photoshop CS3 before checking the support forums. During the installation, CrossOver merely acted as if it were waiting for the installation to complete. It never did, so we had to quit CrossOver and, eventually, reboot entirely. A simple alert that CS3 applications will not work would have helped immensely. CodeWeavers says it is working on more alerts for the next release.

CodeWeavers does offer exceptional email and telephone-based tech support. For one problem – running the unsupported version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Windows – tech support responded in three hours and provided a concise answer: the application is not supported at all. For another problem – printing to a PDF file in Word – the support was much more helpful, providing a clear solution (use the CUPS-PDF driver and print to PDF) in the same time period.

Monday, February 16, 2009

We posted yesterday about Firefox having very different JavaScript performance on Windows and Linux, despite being the same version of the software.

Some people have said that we should have used a stock build from Mozilla. (We disagree, because we'd argue that most Linux users use software from their package manager rather than downloading bits and pieces from the web.) Others have said that Opera should be tested. And some people have said that it's Nvidia/AMD/Intel drivers that are slowing down Linux.

Anyway, we thought we would conduct a couple more quick benchmarks to see whether we can eliminate some of these variants. We don't have time to run the full benchmark suite and fiddle around from scratch, so we ran just a few quick tests to see what we could find.

This time the information you need to know is:

These benchmarks were run on the same computer as before, running the same Fedora 10 install.

We tried Mozilla Firefox for Linux as downloaded straight from Mozilla.

We also tried Mozilla Firefox for Windows as downloaded from Mozilla, but running it using Wine on Fedora.

We installed and tested Opera 9.63 for Fedora 10, as downloaded from Opera.com. Note: we were only able to find i386 builds on the Opera site; this isn't optimal so if someone can point us towards an i686 build for Fedora 10 we will happily update the article.

We ran the Google V8 Benchmark suite V3, as before.

To be absolutely clear: we took the Windows Firefox and ran it on Fedora Linux using Wine 1.1.12 as provided by Fedora:

"Firefox Windows" is Firefox running on Windows.

"Firefox Fedora" is Firefox running on Fedora using the Fedora package.

"Firefox Mozilla" is Firefox running on Fedora using the Mozilla build.

"Firefox Wine" is Firefox as compiled for Windows running on Fedora using Wine.

"Opera" is, well, Opera 9.63 running on Fedora.

With all that in mind, here's how the results look now:

The end result: Firefox from Mozilla or from Fedora has almost nil speed difference, and Firefox running on Wine is faster than native Firefox. Opera lags behind, but we're inclined to believe that number would increase if a better build was used.

As most Linux followers know, Wine allows you to run many Windows programs on Linux. But how does Wine work with Ubuntu and where is it heading? Our quest for answers led us to Ubuntu community developer and Wine expert Scott Ritchie, known by many peers as YokoZar. Here’s our interview with him.

WorksWithU: How are you involved with Ubuntu?

Ritchie: My main job is packaging Wine. If you go to Applications → Add/Remove and select Wine, it’s my package that’s getting on your system and making things work. I am also responsible for the beta packages at winehq.org about 110,000 or so users are taking advantage of these, while another million or so use the default packages.

I’m also an Ubuntu community developer (”MOTU”), which means I have my and all over the distribution. This ranges from filing bugs on things that annoy me (like how it’s 2009 and my PC speaker still insists on making harsh annoying beeps*), to helping add up new packages (the game Spring RTS will be coming to Jaunty after I polish it up a bit, and I’m also starting work on a package called mediainfo) .

I am also active in the Ubuntu community: I moderate the Ubuntu Wine forum, and generally talk about Wine and Ubuntu to whomever will listen.

WorkWithU: What have you done in Ubuntu to improve the Wine experience (ie, whatwould we miss if you didn’t do it?)

Ritchie: I’m one of the few voices for Wine at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, and a powerful voice for usability at the Wine Conference — at wineconf I had a comprehensive list of nice usability features I’d like and the developers discussed how to do them (eg, to get a message about why Wine is taking a while to start up the first time when we’re creating ~/.wine, we need to send a D-Bus message that the desktop then reads. Unfortunately this is before Wine loads it’s own D-Bus driver, so a command line one is needed.)

Should I to mysteriously vanish, Wine development would slow a good amount until someone else provided up to date Ubuntu packages — a surprising amount of good bug reports and test results come from the 100,000 or so people using the beta packages.

WorksWithU: What are you planning to do?

Ritchie: For Jaunty (codename for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04), it will become very easy to install and launch Wine applications for a first time user without any prior instruction — just double clicking the executable will guide you through it much like how codecs are installed.

When I have time (possibly in Jaunty, possibly not till Jaunty + 1), configuring Windows applications will be much much easier. Rather than having to mess around with the horrendous winecfg you’ll instead be able to just go to system -> preferences -> windows applications and be able to say “Emulate Windows 2000 by default.”

WorksWithU: What are some upcoming things in Wine in general that you are excited about?

Ritchie: I’m most excited about upstream developments in Wine. USB driver support is still a few months away (and won’t be in Jaunty), but when it arrives Wine will be much more powerful: ipods and cell phones will just work with the programs designed for them.

The DIB engine, a running joke in Wine since it’s been under development for years, might actually happen soon. That’s a tool for rendering 2d graphics in a reasonable amount of time - it’s the reason why both AutoCAD and StarCraft don’t really work well. It’s a nice example of how Wine can implement a feature that makes it more useful to both professionals and gamers alike.

WorksWithU: What else do you do?

Ritchie: I seem to find far more side projects then I have any sort of time to do. Take the mediainfo package, for instance: I wanted to make it very easy for a novice user to stream their music and movies to their xbox or playstation by just right clicking on it. But to do that I needed to setup and configure a UPNP server. And to do that I needed to modify a bunch of scripts and install mediainfo by hand. Now that last part will be much easier, but there’s still a ton of work to do on the rest of the problem.

I get a lot of emails about Wine from random users. 100% of them are asking for help, usually with basic installation or use - this makes sense, as Wine is currently rather arcane and there are, literally, millions of people using it. I don’t mind at all - I originally came to the project with the goal of producing good documentation. But no one reads that, so now I’m trying to make the software usable enough to not need documentation in the first place.

In real life, I have a part time job teaching SAT and LSAT prep courses. I make little money, and am basically mooching my living space. I’ve considered cutting back on Ubuntu to focus more on personal ambition, however I have millions of users, each receiving very real value from what I do. It would be immoral to stop and end all that, even if something relatively profitable came my way.

WorksWithU: Have any Wine-related tips for Ubuntu users?

Ritchie: My biggest piece of advice is for users to avoid using the latest Wine unless something’s broken or you want to help us beta test. People are often frustrated by Wine regressions, but you’ll never encounter them if you just use the working installation you have.

WorksWithU: How do you feel about Wine being so good, that most people preferred it to Cedega’s client for playing EVE Online?

Ritchie: This was expected really; Wine has long been developing at a faster pace than Cedega, with a specific eye towards making things work in the long term. This meant we avoided short term hacks to get a particular game working for a while, but now it’s paying off - arbitrary applications, including games, usually work much better in the completely free Wine than they do Cedega.

It does point out a deficiency in our marketing, however - other than google, no one’s really used Wine as a porting toolkit, however in principle there’s no reason Wine couldn’t be completely taking overCedega’s entire Mac/Linux porting business.

WorksWithU: Anything else you’d like to mention?

Ritchie: Yes, code analysis tools. Wine’s benefited quite a bit from the static tools (Coverity and Smatch), which run free scans of Wine as a form of marketing. Valgrind is the most interesting however - There’s been work to slowly clear up all the valgrind warnings that Wine itself is generating. Once those are clear, you could in principle build/run a Windows application with Winelib and Valgrindand use it to find errors that wouldn’t be possible to find on Windows itself.

Which, once word gets out, means we very well may see Windows developers testing with Winelib relatively early in the process even if their target platform is Windows — the Winelib/Linux port just sort of happens as a nice side effect - since valgrind is Linux only.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

OK, Today I double checked just to be 100% sure about the sales date on the CodeWeavers Valentines day Sale and in fact it's going to end on the 14th for certain. So this is your last chance to save BIG folks, 33% hey that's 1/3 off a really nice product that supports Wine development and the Wine conference.

CodeWeavers is offering up to 33% off CrossOver Mac Standard, CrossOver Linux Standard, and CrossOver Games. This store-wide sale is good for the entire inventory of CodeWeavers CrossOver product line. This sale expires on February 14th, 2009. If you're looking to purchase CrossOver this is a unique opportunity to save BIG.

To take advantage of this offer head over to their store and check out all the savings.

Here is a news that will make Mac users happy. Today, PlayOnLinux releases the first beta of PlayOnMac, a version of PlayOnLinux specifically designed for Mac OS.

This version works perfectly on Leopard.It should also work on Tiger, as long as you've installed python, wxpython and X11.You must have a recent mac with an Intel CPU.

Darwine 1.1.5 (Wine compiled for Mac OS X) is included in the package.

At the moment, we have two scripts (to do tests):- Notepad++- Crayon Physics.

Obviously, this list should grow in the future.The repositories are the same as PlayOnLinux's ones. You just have to tick the box saying "this script is PlayOnMac compatible" to integrate a script to PlayOnMac when submitting it.

It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

IrfanView is trying to create new and/or interesting features in its own way, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 7+ years).

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

MSN Messenger allows you to chat online, in real time, with family, friends and colleagues. It's faster than e-mail, more discreet than a phone call, and best of all it's free! MSN Messenger is more than just text, it's a great way to collaborate with co-workers or touch base with family and friends.

You can even send an instant message to a contact's mobile phone. Customization features help you personalize your chats and make your connections even more meaningful.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory, with no other applications or games installed.

Now download winetricks if you don't already have it and install the following Windows redistributables.

corefontsflashgeckogdiplusmsls31msxml3riched20riched30tahoma

MSN Messenger install in Wine

You will need to get the installer from a Windows XP machine or download it from the Internet, dont try to install the online installer wlsetup-custom.exe this installer won't currently work with Wine. What you need is the "Install_{508CE775-4BA4-4748-82DF-FE28DA9F03B0}.msi" from: Program files/Common Files/WindowsLiveInstaller/MsiSources and "Install_{508CE775-4BA4-4748-82DF-FE28DA9F03B0}.msi" should be there if you have Messenger 2008 or 2009 installed on the XP machine. You can also do what I did and google for the offline installer and download it from a host. Just be aware that the installer for 2008 and 2009 are named the same,version 8.5 is version 2008 btw.

OK, once you have the installer install it like this:

$ msiexec /i Install_{508CE775-4BA4-4748-82DF-FE28DA9F03B0}.msi

the install will run in your terminal, once the install has completed run winecfg and select "Add application" then go to ".wine/drive_c/Program Files/Windows Live/Messenger" and select "msnmsgr.exe" then set the windows version for "msnmsgr.exe" to win2000 then click OK.

Now run $ wineboot and if you followed all the directions to a tee MSN Mesenger should start up and then all you need to do is sign in.

This howto is good for versions 2008 and 2009, all the steps are the exact same and both versions work about the same.

Monday, February 9, 2009

EVE Online Linux support ends, the news was handed down today from the EVE Online site.

Hello,

My name is Arend Stührmann, also known as CCP Whisper, and I am the producer in charge of the project bringing EVE Online to the Mac and Linux operating systems. As you may know, we have been working in partnership with Transgaming Technologies, utilizing their Cider engine to allow EVE Online to run on the Mac OS and their Cedega engine to enable operation under Linux. This project went live in late 2007 and in that time we have seen the same slow, steady growth in the numbers of users of the Mac client that has characterized the growth of EVE Online throughout its history. However we have not seen a similar growth in the numbers using our Linux client.

It is for this reason that I am sorry to have to announce that from the 10th of March onwards CCP will no longer be officially supporting the Linux operating system. The low amount of users of the Linux client did not justify the degree of additional complexity having three operating systems imposes on our development and release schedules. There is the matter of maintaining the hardware infrastructure to facilitate the development work, spending man-hours on testing and diagnosing faults in the client as well as regression testing. While we did embark on this project with the aim of being one of the few MMOG’s on the market offering a game client for all of the major operating system architectures, we feel that the time and resources that were being spent on the Linux client would be better utilized in areas where more players would benefit from them.

I would like to thank you for your past support of our efforts to bring EVE to the Linux OS. The feedback and commitment we obtained from players like you helped both CCP and Transgaming with our attempts to improve on the quality and stability of the client. Many of us in CCP use Linux and are convinced of its merits as an operating system.

Should you wish to continue playing EVE Online under Linux there are several options available. Some of these are free and some require purchase of software. A selection of these is at the bottom of this e-mail along with basic instructions on how to use EVE Online through them. If you wish to stop playing EVE Online and want to request a refund of unused game time, please contact our billing department by filing a petition in the billing category. They will assist you in obtaining a refund for the remaining game time and closing your account.

Wine: To install Wine either use your distributions package management software or download the sounrce and install it manually.

To install EVE using Wine follow these steps.1. Download the Windows client from our homepage 2. Right click on the EVE client installer and select “open with Wine Windows Program Loader”3. This starts the EVE client installation process.4. Follow the instructions here to get EVE to run fully.4. When complete simply run the EVE online Client using the Shortcut created on your desktop.

Wine-Doors: Wine-Doors is a frontend application for Wine and includes easy installation for a number of additional programs and games with easy installation procedures.

To install EVE using Wine-Doors follow these steps:1. Download the Windows client from our homepage 2. Start Wine-Doors3. Find EVE Online in the list of available applications and press the install option behind it, then press Apply.4. Navigate to where you saved the EVE installer and press Open.5. This starts the EVE client installation process.6. Install all Windows Fonts available6. When completed simply go to Applications –> Wine –> Programs –> EVE and select EVE Online to start.

PlayOnLinux: PlayOnLinux is another frontend application for Wine which also includes easy installation for a number of programs and games.

To install EVE using PlayOnLinux follow these steps.1. Download the Windows client from our homepage 2. Under File select Install3. At the bottom of the window you see a text line “Install a .pol package or an unsupported application”. A new window appears.4. Select Manual installation and press NEXT5 A wizard is started, press Forward6. Select “Install a program in a new prefix”7. Name the Prefix EVE ( do not use spaces ) and press Forward8. Browse to the location where you saved the EVE installer, select it and then press Forward.9. Now begins the Installation process for the EVE client itself.10. When the EVE client has completed installation untick “Run EVE-Online” then press Finish and then Forward.11. Say yes to creating a shortcut to the Application12. Press Browse and navigate into the Program Files\CCP\EVE folder, there select eve.exe and press open then Forward.13. Name the shortcut ( i.e. EVE Online ) and press Forward.14. Select where you wish the shortcut to be displayed and press Forward then press No.

CodeWeavers CrossOver Games: With CrossOver Games, you can run many popular Windows games on your Intel OS X Mac, Linux or BSD. Whatever your tastes, first-person shooters, fantasy, strategy, MMORPG's CrossOver Games provides the capability to run many popular games titles.

1. Install the Codeweavers games application2. Start the CodeWeaver Games application and select EVE Online from the options list and press next.3. The installation process takes care of all requirements so there’s not much else you need to do at this point but wait for it to complete apart from pressing Yes and Ok from time to time.4. When the installation is complete untick “Run EVE-Online” and press finish.5. The application finalizes the installation proces, when finished press Finish.6. Start the EVE client by double clicking on the EVE icon on your desktop.

MSN Messenger allows you to chat online, in real time, with family, friends and colleagues. It's faster than e-mail, more discreet than a phone call, and best of all it's free! MSN Messenger is more than just text, it's a great way to collaborate with co-workers or touch base with family and friends.

You can even send an instant message to a contact's mobile phone. Customization features help you personalize your chats and make your connections even more meaningful.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory, with no other applications or games installed.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Valentine’s Day was created in ancient Roman times in honor of St. Valentine, a priest who sacrificed his life for the gift of love. Today, this amorous holiday is still celebrated throughout the world by star-crossed lovers and romantics alike.

CodeWeavers is having a Pre-Valentine's Day Sale to give their customers plenty of time in order to have the perfect gift. Nothing says "I Love You" like no more need for Microsoft Windows!

CodeWeavers is offering up to 33% off CrossOver Mac Standard, CrossOver Linux Standard, and CrossOver Games. This store-wide sale is good for the entire inventory of CodeWeavers CrossOver product line. This sale expires on February 14th, 2009. If you're looking to purchase CrossOver this is a unique opportunity to save BIG.

To take advantage of this offer head over to their store and check out all the savings.

About CodeWeavers

CodeWeavers' mission is to transform Mac OS X and Linux into Windows®-compatible operating systems. By doing so, they provide a bridge to help users migrate from the Windows software world to these other environments. They do this primarily by making it possible to use Windows software on Mac OS X and Linux.

CodeWeavers is the leading corporate backer of the Wine Project. Wine is an open source software initiative that is systematically re-implementing the Win32 API under Unix. Wine makes it possible for PCs running Unix-based operating systems (like OS X and Linux) to run Windows application as if natively. They offer a range of Wine-based products offering cross-platform capabilities for both corporate environments as well as individual users.

They also use their expertise in Wine to provide professional services to their customers. They use Wine to port their applications directly to Linux or Mac OS X, or to create custom versions of Linux that support mission critical applications.

The world of Windows Applications is very large and diverse, and tracking the status of any given application with regards to Wine is a challenging task. To meet this challenge, they maintain the CodeWeavers CrossOver Compatibility Center, which provides a focal point for application information and tools to help ensure that all applications progress towards full compatibility.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and is the first major update to the browser in over 5 years. It ships as the default browser in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and is offered as a replacement for Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Estimates of IE7's global market share place it between approximately 26% and 47%.

Large portions of the underlying architecture, including the rendering engine and security framework, have been significantly reworked. New features include tabbed browsing, page zooming, an integrated search box, a feed reader, better internationalization, and improved support for web standards. Security enhancements include a phishing filter, stronger encryption on Windows Vista, and a "Delete browsing history" button to easily clear private data.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory, with no other applications or games installed.

The IE 7 install should now start, I didnt select the Windows security updates in my install.

IE 7 on Wine Screen Shots

Here's a few Screen Shots of IE 7 running on my Ubuntu 8.04 laptop.

Conclusion known problems

While IE 7 will run and render web pages just fine there are still a number of problems/bugs that remain to be resolved before you will want to use the browser on Linux on a daily basis.

Bookmarks and RSS feeds don't currently work and their is a number of problems related to comctl32.dll for example the forward and backward buttons background isn't painted and even worse if you select Help the browser will lock up. I also had a number of lock ups when trying to save Internet options.

The good news is you can select a homepage of your liking and choose Google as the default search engine. You can also view web pages as see how they render with IE 7 if your a web developer.

One way to help support further development of Internet Explorer support is to purchase CrossOver Office and then vote for IE 7 as the app that you would most like to see supported in a future release.